Red Cross Suspends Afghan Operations

The International Committee of the Red Cross has announced that it is temporarily suspending all operations in Afghanistan after a Wednesday suicide attack against their office in Jalalabad, which killed a security guard and wounded another staff member.

The Red Cross statement said the closures would remain “until further notice” and provided no indication of when they would start up again. The comments suggested that the offices in Jalalabad will remain closed, potentially for good.

The question of who was behind the attack is also unanswered, as the Taliban has openly disavowed the incident, saying they would never support an attack on Red Cross targets, and that their fighters have been admonished to not target independent aid agencies in general.

The Red Cross has had operations in Afghanistan since 1987, and continued throughout the Taliban’s rule of the 1990’s. The group is said to be in talks with Taliban officials as well as the Karzai government in trying to determine who carried out the attack.